Dr Riadh Al-Mahaidi is a Professor of Structural Engineering and Director of the Smart Structures Laboratory at Swinburne University of Technology. He also holds the position Vice President (International Engagement) at Swinburne. Prior to joining Swinburne in January 2010, he was the Head of the Structures Group at Monash University. Over the past 20 years, he focused his research and practice on life time integrity of bridges, particularly in the area of structural strength assessment and retrofitting using advanced composite materials.

He currently leads a number of research projects on strengthening of bridges using fibre reinforced polymers combined cement-based bonding agents, fatigue life improvement of metallic structures using advanced composite systems and shape memory alloys. He recently started some projects on hybrid testing of structures. He received a BSc (Hon 1) degree in civil engineering from the University of Baghdad and MSc and PhD degrees in structural engineering from Cornell University in the United States.

To date, Riadh published over 185 journal and 235 conference papers and authored/edited 10 books and conference proceedings. He was awarded the 2012 Vice Chancellor’s Internationalization Award, the RW Chapman Medals in 2005 and 2010 for best journal publication in Engineers Australia Structural Journal, best paper awards at ACUN-4 (2002) and ACUN-6 (2012) Composites conferences. Prof Al-Mahaidi and his research group won the 2016 Engineers Australia Excellence Award for Innovation, Research and Development (High Commendation) for the Multi-Axis Substructure Testing (MAST) System they built at Swinburne. He was recently awarded the 2017 WH Warren Medal by Board of the College of Civil Engineers of Engineers Australia.

Employment Record: Academic career includes various lecturing positions in UK and overseas universities and colleges including University of Swansea, Leicester Polytechnic and Sulaimaniah University. I also held in a number of visiting posts: City University, London; University of Applied Sciences, Fachhochschule Wedel, Germany; and University of Kurdistan -Hawler. Also worked as an Advisor to the Minister of Higher Education in Kurdistan-Iraqas well as an Academic Advisor for University of Kurdistan –Hawler.

Teaching Experience: I have been teaching various mathematical and computing courses, both at undergraduate and postgraduate level, since the 70’s. Courses include Linear & Numerical Algebra, Group Theory, Topology, Theory of Computation, Information Theory, Discrete Mathematics, Algorithms, Information Security, and Image processing.

Research Interest and activities: I am a pure mathematician by training but have a strong interest in computing research that are intensively reliant on mathematical techniques and structures. My original interest was in Group theory and Riemann surfaces influenced to varying degrees my different computational research activities. My research profile covers a wide range of mathematics and computation areas of Computational Geometry; Graph and group algorithms; classification of Riemann surfaces and Riemannian manifolds; Biometrics authentications and crypto-systems; Security of multimedia objects; Dimension reduction and Compressive sensing; Dynamic cryptography; Bioinformatics; Visual speech and word recognition. My recent research investigations are focused on developing smart machine learning algorithms that exploit topological features (persistent homology). These algorithms are currently applied for biomedical image analysis and intelligent diagnostics, as well as for digital Forensics. I published over 120 papers, in refereed journals and conferences, on the work done above research areas. I also contributed 5 book chapters, and edited the proceedings of an annual international SPIE conference held in the USA since 2007. I have successfully supervised 21 PhD and 8 MSc theses in areas of Mathematics and Computation. Currently I am supervising 10 PhD students at different stages of their program.
I act as External examiner of PhD thesis at various UK and EU universities, and review publications for international journal and conferences. I participated in EU funded FP6 projects, e.g. the SecurePhone and the BROADWAN projects.
I am contributing to supervision of Innovate-UK funded Knowledge Transfer Projects (KTP) with industry.

Keynote speakers for the last year (IEC2017)

Dr. Hans J. HoyerSecretary General, IFEES
Executive Secretary, GEDC

Hans J. Hoyer is the Secretary General of the International Federation for Engineering Education Societies (IFEES), Executive Secretary of the Global Engineering Deans Council (GEDC), and Resident Scholar in Global Engineering at Marquette University. Former Director of International Programs and Strategy for the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) and co-founder of the Indo-US Collaborative for Engineering Education (IUCEE).
Dr. Hoyer has been a Visiting Scholar at the Center for International Studies at MIT, a Fellow at Harvard’s School of Education and Visitor at the Kennedy School of Government. He was dean of the graduate program at the School for International Training, World Learning and Executive Director of the Executive Training Program for global governmental and NGO leaders in Brattleboro, Vermont. He also taught at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. and Montgomery College, Takoma Park, MD. He earned his Ph.D. at American University in Washington, D.C. and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Organization of American States, carrying out research in the Rio de la Plata region of South America. He is Honorary Professor in universities in India, Peru and Kazakhstan.

Worked in Civil Engineering industry and academia for 35 years in UK, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Thailand, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mauritius.
Areas of activity are focused around civil construction; Construction technology, Feasibility studies, IT applications & simulation, Engineering economics Appropriate technology, Engineering education.
Now Professor of Civil Engineering at Curtin University, Perth Australia. Recently visiting teaching fellow at Canterbury University, New Zealand and Nottingham University, UK.
External examiner: Malaysia, Mauritius Chair and member of accreditation panels for Engineers Australia throughout Australia for more than 10 years.

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Enhancement of the Safety of Structures under Extreme Events

ABSTRACTOne of the major challenges facing the civil engineering community is to reduce the risk of catastrophic damage due to the extreme loads and enhance the resiliency of urban infrastructure. Experimental testing of large-scale structures is the most reliable means to assess and improve the resilience and performance of structural systems under extreme loads. The development and use of advanced cyber-physical systems, has paved the way to enhance the existing experimental methods in a suitable and cost-effective manner. Hybrid simulation is an innovative cyber-physical testing technique in which computational models and physical components are integrated at run-time. This method overcomes many of the limitations of conventional shaking table tests while using similar equipment used for quasi-static testing. A state-of-the-art hybrid testing facility, referred to as the Multi-Axis Substructure Testing (MAST) system, has been designed, assembled and validated that is capable of simulating the complex three-dimensional time-varying boundary effects on large-scale structural components. The MAST system is unique in Australasia and is capable to serve the research community and practice, nationally and internationally. The paper presents versatile capabilities of the MAST system that will greatly advance the current state of knowledge in large-scale experimental testing.